Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiA Distress Signal in Westerly
WESTERLY, R.I. - Jason and Kelly Jarvis are in trouble. She lost her job in September. He has been out of work since last month.
![[Kelly and Jason Jarvis, an unemployed couple in Westerly, grew so frustrated by their situation that they hung a flag upside down from their house last week as a sign of distress. (The Providence Journal / Kris Craig)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/distress.jpg "distress.jpg")
The couple, married for 16 years and with two teenage sons, are running out of money. They are behind on their mortgage payments and their lender keeps calling, asking them when they'll mail a check.
They've tried to stay positive, but a week ago, after answering several of those calls, Kelly Jarvis broke down. Her husband tried to reassure her, but he grew frustrated, too.
It was then that Jason Jarvis walked out to the front porch of their two-story Greek Revival on Beach Street and hung an American flag upside down between two posts.
Flying the flag upside down is an internationally recognized distress signal.
He did it to express despair about the state of the economy and to call attention to the plight of the 56,800 Rhode Islanders without jobs. The state's unemployment rate hit 10 percent last month, the highest in 34 years. Only Michigan has a higher percentage of jobless residents.
"I'm angry. I'm frustrated. I'm pretty desperate," Jason Jarvis said yesterday. "This was a cry that we're not alone."
But some of the Jarvises' neighbors considered the gesture unpatriotic and a desecration of the flag. The police received complaints and sent an officer to the Jarvises' house on Saturday while the couple were out.
When Kelly Jarvis arrived home, a patrol car was waiting outside. Across the street, a man who doesn't live in the neighborhood was taking photographs of the flag and yelling, "It ain't right," she said.
The officer, while telling her that some neighbors were upset, didn't ask her to remove the flag. But she grew worried that someone would vandalize the house. She took it down.
But Jason Jarvis wanted people to know why he hung the flag. He sent a letter to The Westerly Sun explaining the symbol. The newspaper ran a story two days ago that has been picked up on talk radio and local TV.
Steven Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, said he was called by a radio reporter about the flag. He defended the Jarvises' right to fly the flag upside down, saying that it is a protected form of speech. Brown said the police had no right to go to the Jarvises' home. The visit, he contended, could be interpreted as "a subtle form of intimidation."
"It's just none of the Police Department's business," Brown said in an interview. "Court decisions make clear that this is political speech. The flag is a symbol. He was making a statement and it generated discussion. That's what the First Amendment is all about."
Police Chief Edward A. Mello did not respond to a message seeking comment.
Federal flag rules in the U.S. Code of laws forbid the flying of an American flag upside down "except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property."
In a 1974 decision, the Supreme Court affirmed the right of a person to use the flag for political expression. In the case, Spence v. Washington, the court sided with a college student who had hung the flag upside down and attached peace symbols to either side of it.
Jason Jarvis learned the meaning of the upside-down flag from his late father, who worked as a master shipwright at Mystic Seaport. An upside-down flag has historically been used as a nautical symbol of distress.
He followed his father into the marine industry, working off and on for two decades on fishing boats out of Point Judith. He has also worked as a chef and as a licensed drug and alcohol counselor.
For the past 10 years, he spent his summers working on monkfish boats and as first mate on a charter fishing boat in Point Judith, and his winters working for an oyster farm in Westerly and for a local construction company. The hatchery and the construction company both laid off all their workers before Christmas. And with fishing regulations tightening, the monkfish boat may not sail this year.
Kelly Jarvis lost her job last September as manager of a bead shop in Mystic, Conn. She has been searching for work since then, but has been unable to find a job.
She and her husband, both 41, live with their 14-year-old son in a modest house about a mile from Misquamicut Beach. Their older son, who is 19, is studying electrical engineering at the New England Institute of Technology.
Jason Jarvis applied online for state unemployment benefits on Dec. 1 but has yet to receive his first check. The director of the state Department of Labor and Training, which manages the unemployment benefits system, said earlier this month that the department has a backlog of 9,000 online requests for information and benefits, dating to Dec. 22.
The couple used to have a combined income of about $60,000 a year. For now, the family lives on Kelly Jarvis' unemployment checks from the benefits system in Connecticut - $334 a week - and whatever money Jason Jarvis earns from odd jobs. It's not nearly enough to cover their bills, including the $1,800 monthly mortgage payments on the house they've owned for 16 years. The couple are already two months behind on their payments.
More than 40 people responded online to The Westerly Sun story, many of them in support of the Jarvises. A half-dozen people called the couple's home expressing solidarity, according to Kelly Jarvis.
"We're just small people here," she said. "We don't expect to ever be millionaires. We just want to pay our bills, live comfortably and enjoy our house."
They know they are not the only ones who are suffering. They don't want to offend anyone, but they believe in the statement they're trying to make.
They are thinking of putting the flag back up.
16 Comments so far
Show AllA minor point, seemingly, but in the hands of the wrong people...:
Please don't say that fishing regulations have tightened, without further explanation. If you do, uninformed conservatives will blame the problem on government meddling. Say instead that because of a combination of problems shared by fisheries all over the world--overfishing, industrial and agricultural poisoning of the water, dredging and filling and poisoning and fresh water-starvation of coastal marshes, and now especially Global Climate Catastrophe--fisheries are collapsing, and governments are stepping in (far too late), trying to prevent the utter destruction of every marine species we and the biosphere depend on.
There will be a lot more coastal people and towns out of work soon, and although we can't prevent it completely we can make it less terrible--with more, and more stringent government regulation--and we can plan for it and help people make better transitions than the Jarvises have had.
Tripling the Federal budget for education would be a good start--oh, sorry, we just did that... Quadrupling, anyone? More money for adult education? Universal single-payer health care, anyone? Drastically increased protections for oceans, bays, marshes and other bodies of water? (Like human bodies) A crash program of conservation and renewable energy, anyone? (to cut down that poisoning).
I applaud Obama's moves so far, as far as he's moved. But it's times like these you really miss President Dennis Kucinich.
The design of the first US flag is a cheap knock-off of the flag of world's first pillaging transnational corporation - the East India Company of the same era - thirteen lateral stripes alternating white and red, with a square field of blue in the upper left corner. How prescient the abstract symbol of American patriotism and worship has proved. Flying it upside down is just a signal that the notorious rusty bucket of bolts, a.k.a. the USS Piratocracy, is taking on water. Sniffle, boo hoo.
This flag should be upside down to signal pirates have taken over the building.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/218/493345740_65a7aee165.jpg
Joe
It is a shame the police didn't tell the callers that:
1. The upside down flag is a symbol of distress. Have you asked your neighbor what the problem is and how you can help?
2. We will call or send an officer over to connect them with someone who can help them.
3. If you don't want to help these people with their problem and you don't want your government to help them, you could at least not add to their problems by calling the police and bothering them.
4. Why don't you ask your political representatives to help these and other people so that in the richest country in the world we don't have the embarrassment of distressed people in the midst of wasteful plenty?
5. This is these their flag and they can hang it any damn way they please other than ways specifically prohibited by the law. Here is the reference, ............ This is none of your business and you need to find something to do other than pester your neighbors and the police.
When the Rodney King verdict was handed down a friend hung the flag upside down in our appartment building in Hollywood. DIstress, things out of whack, koyaanisqatsi.
Flying a flag upside-down is not desecration of a flag any more than writing a note is desecration of the alphabet. It's communicating while doing nothing that harms the means of communication. Who has more right to display a distress signal than these people ???
Jarvises! If you can hear us . . . put the flag back up!
Unless the flag worshipping pseudopatriots step up and help the Jarvis family they should kindly STFU. But no, they blame struggling people and worship Wall Street.
True patriots of "the land of the free and the home of the brave" should ALL fly our flag upside down! The U.S.A. is certainly "in dire distress" for several reasons: de-regulated & unchecked corporate and Wall Street greed; five decades of misspent resources by the military-industrial complex; the out-of-touch, lobbyist-dominated Congress; a criminal "unitary Presidency"; and individual plus government irresponsibility in mortgaging the future to pay for obscene
consumerism today.
Huge changes in "the American way of life" are necessary and will come involuntarily if not by choice. With the Jarvises we should choose to face the fact of our dire national distress, brainstorm and buckle down to solve our essential problems, and live modestly, equitably and humbly together with each other and the world in a green, sustainable future with "liberty and justice for ALL."
This is a story I am aware of in Ohio, and was aware of in New York City during the Great Depression that I thought would never happen again. We must understand that those who are thrown out of work, have little or no other income to sustain them, are victims, not perpetrators. And we must do everything to help them, not to hurt them. We and they are American citizens, the recipients of the promises of the Bill of Rights, the rest of the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence. We must rise to our highest obligations to ensure that all citizens receive the respect promised by these documents and by our being their neighbors, no matter what address we may have. We all face the tsunami of desperation, of loss, of shame, at this terrible time. Let us not make it worse by alienating our neighbors through bitter accusations; let us make it a little better; we can do that; yes we can, and must!
Regardless of which way you fly it, Old Gory rivals the Swastika in terms of worldwide disrespect. It's time for a new flag to go with the new country.
With a new flag we need a new pledge: I pledge allegiance to the Constitution , the Bill of Rights, and the people of the United States of America and not to our new flag or any Government. One nation under the God of all religions, with liberty and justice for all.
couldn't we just leave the god crap out of it?
"no gods, no masters" --m. sanger
How about this one?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:J20_corporate_flag_dc.jpg
Do it!
And all this hardship after being out of work only a couple months?
In Europe, working-class people sometimes voluntarily quit work for longer than that for recreational pursuits.
Thanks to superior wages and social benefits people in europe can be out of work for several months it is no big deal.
It is good they are angry. Keep that flag upside down!
---USAn---